Two Years of Will

I have a new favorite quote:
"One child is a sidekick. Two children makes you parents."

We did it! Somehow Will survived to the age of 2. He had a happy life up until last December when he seemed to realize that something was up. His parents kept talking about Alex, the baby. In an effort to help Will to understand why his mom was getting so large, we tried to tell him that there was a baby inside. He didn't get it, but went along with kissing my tummy at bedtime. Of course, he also had to kiss Dan's tummy too. And, he continues with the habit today on our much smaller tummies.

On April 6th, Will turned 2. We had a birthday party for him the day prior with actual children attending. Dan and I are still in denial to some degree about our mandated role of hanging out with only people who have children, so there were some non-parents there. Here are some pictures from the event taken mostly by Neal as Dan and I were busy managing children.

If anyone else took pictures ( Andrew), could you please send us some?

Train Cake!

Party People

Backyard Grilling

Thank you to everyone for coming! People brought gifts, fortunately not too many that produce clutter. Will got a bunch of amazing books. He loves reading them at bedtime and when he is supposed to be napping.

Alex the Great International Traveler

Ok, so he had to wait longer than Will to travel internationally (3 months versus 10 days). And it was a shorter flight (2 1/2 hours versus 10 hours). But Alex got to go on his first international trip at the beginning of April. To Canada! A place where Will has only traveled in utero.

How did he like it? Well, he really doesn't like the airplanes so much. Silly baby only eats when he is hungry, so he won't nurse during take off and landing. This causes him much ear distress which he shares with the other passengers through lots of angry crying.

Disgruntled Alex Waiting at Airport

How about the rest of the trip? Dan got to spend some quality time with Alex while I hung out at a conference. I got to talk to actual other adults! It was the place to be in the world of Audit Data Analysis. I did get to push Alex around some in the stroller prior to us joining some other conference goers for dinner. Here is the lovely camera phone photo taken outside of Canadian Staples, I think.

We aren't sure if we will be taking Alex on many trips in the near future, you know, before he can be distracted by the portable dvd player. But, he will be traveling with me to Minnesota for work next month. I took Will on a plane trip by myself back when he was Alex's age, but who knows how it will go with Alex "The Great Cranky Traveler" Kroboth.

Real Estate Relief

We did it! We no longer own our condo in Virginia. In this "buyer's market" we, um, sold. You might think that someone with an Economics degree might decide to sell during a seller's market, but nope. Originally, last May, we decided that we would try to rent our condo to someone. It was very nice. Not too expensive. It's wired with ethernet drops and cable drops in various rooms. But, after more than 6 months of not renting, we decided to contact a real estate agent and sell the place.

So, if you are in the market for a real estate agent in the DC area, we have a recommendation. Matthew Ryan of RE/MAX CitySide went above and beyond his duties as a realtor for us. It is difficult to sell something when you aren't nearby, but Matthew helped us to pull it off.

I guess this means that if we visit the DC area, we no longer have our own place to stay. Anyone up for hosting us? Unfortunately we have the 2 children to deal with. They are loud during the day, but actually sleep all night pretty quietly.


I forgot to attach this photo to the original post about our condo sale. As part of the sale, we had to get some documents notarized at Kinko's. Will helped us keep track of all of the signature tape flags.